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Racism

One sentence that summarizes economics is, "there's no such thing as a free lunch." Sure, anyone can have a lunch and not pay for it, but it still is not free. Everything costs something to someone. Even if you don't pay for your lunch, someone will, whether it be your lunch partner, the restaurant manager, the owner, or the people who supply the raw materials to make that food. Everything acquired by a person or a community is accompanied by a price, monetary or not. Jaime Fox said, "Ain't nothing in this world for free, and it blows my mind how many fools just don't get that." I agree with this statement. Many forms of literature, such as Martin Luther King's speech "I Have a Dream" and "Learning to Read and Write" by Fredrick Douglas, have documented the high price paid for freedom and basic human rights; they show that even freedom, where the root word is "free", has an expensive tag.
Usually, when we think of something as being free, we associate it with money. I believe Jaime Fox's statement can be applied to so much more than "bought" materials. For many years, African Americans and other minorities have been fighting for freedom, a right that has been won with hard work, spilled blood, broken bones, and tears. This is the ultimate price tag. In Dr. King's speech he claimed that by signing the Constitution and the Declaration of independence, the "architects of our republic wrote a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—yes, Black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned" (447). He urges his audience, of both white and black citizens, to fight for these rights promised to all Americans. "We have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the...